With an ever-increasing emphasis on security, the use of cryptographic techniques in computer processing systems is becoming more prevalent. As a result, larger portions of processing resources are being devoted to cryptographic processing. Cryptographic processing can be computationally intensive and time consuming.
Currently, many systems utilize cryptographic techniques in accordance with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 197, Nov. 26, 2001, available at http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips197/fips-197.pdf. The AES, also known as the Rijndael algorithm, specifies cryptographic techniques that can be used to protect electronic data. The AES is a symmetric block cipher that can encrypt (encipher) and decrypt (decipher) information. Some aspects of the AES are computationally intensive and can present processing “bottlenecks.” These bottlenecks can slow down security applications and can interfere with other processes being executed on a processor. Further, close analysis of the timing associated with cryptographic processing in accordance with some current implementations of the AES can lead to leakage of cryptographic keys, which could result in weakened security.